Islamic Art Museum

CAIRO - 29 November 2017: Whether you are a fan of Islamic heritage or not, it takes one visit to the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Cairo to become one. To experience this museum is to travel back in time.

After years of renovation and reorganization of the available collection, the museum opened its doors last August for the audience to be dazzled by its contents. Located in the heart of the Arab world, with a new display including approximately 1,700 objects, MIA is still one of the most important and largest collections on the subject in the world.

Relocated here in 1903 from its original home at the Fatimid Mosque of al-Hakim, this building is of tremendous importance, as it is the oldest building purposefully built to display Islamic art.

The collection was accumulated from various sources, including excavations, purchases, gifts and important Islamic monuments in Cairo. Consequently, the museum owns impressive ceramics, textiles, metalwork, carved wood and stone artifacts that illustrate the material culture of Egypt from the 7th-19th centuries, as well as the largest group of enameled and gilded Mamluk mosque lamps in the world.

Previously arranged by material, the new scenario takes a chronological approach, beginning with the Umayyad era, before continuing with the Abbasid/Tulunid, Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. The second half of the tour includes artifacts from Ottoman Turkey, Persia and Andalus (Muslim Spain), as well as thematic sections, such as funerary art, epigraphy, calligraphy, carpets and textiles, geometry, astronomy and medicine.

The museum is one large floor, yet has enough exhibits for at least two hours of interesting browsing. The museum's interior was designed to depend on the natural light, which makes it among the most comfortable museums in Egypt to visit.

The museum's tickets are fairly affordable. Foreigners are charged LE 50 ($2.77) per adult and LE 10 per student; Egyptians are charged LE 10 per adult and LE 5 per student. A photography ticket costs LE 50.


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